What does being cloud smart actually mean?
At VMware Explore 2022, taking place in Barcelona, VMware spoke about the need to escape cloud chaos by being cloud smart. VMware suggested that a cloud first approach adopted by many organisations had led to lengthy refactoring programs with extended time to value for many organisations.
From my perspective I have seen similar cloud first approaches turning to chaos led by a uncertainty of where to start, leading to a lack of innovation and paused initiatives. Equally those that have started have failed to do so in a manner that drives business value leading to increased costs or security concerns.
VMware’s cloud smart approach is to offer a unified platform and set of tools that embraces the hybrid cloud, alongside the acceptance of migrating workloads to the public cloud, whilst refactoring where business value can be gained.
Microsoft echo’d this message in their session at VMware Explore whilst talking about their Azure VMware Solution (VMware Cloud Foundation in Azure) and Azure Arc for vSphere (on-premises vSphere management and operations from within Azure). The Microsoft presenter explained to expect every workload to be refactored or indeed even moved to the public cloud was an unrealistic and unhelpful expectation.
Irrespective of the right Cloud smart solution that will work for your organisation in a hybrid / multi cloud approach, now is the time to move away from setting a strategy of cloud first without much substance and moving to a business outcome driven cloud smart approach.